Business entities try to promote reuse of documents by introducing a document management system. Products at early stage receive a paper document as an image using a scanner and registers and saves the image. Recently, many electronic documents are created by personal computers, and even they can also be registered and saved. In addition, recently, arbitrary pages can be extracted from a plurality of registered electronic documents and bound like a binder to form one electronic document. This will be referred to as an electronic binder hereinafter.
Conventionally, however, when documents composed by selecting only required partial documents from a plurality of electronic source documents (application files and scan images) are managed with electronic binders, these selected partial documents are managed as converted and generated documents generated in such a manner that they are converted into unified predetermined file formats defined in advance (image file formats, PDF formats, MultiPage TIFF formats). Therefore, if one wants to delete a part of the converted and generated electronic document and thereafter bring back the deleted part, the converted and generated electronic document should be recomposed using a partial document including the deleted part before being managed with the electronic binder.
To realize such an electronic binder, conventionally, a plurality of different electronic documents are temporarily converted into a unitary electronic document format, and the converted electronic documents are edited to compose a desired generated electronic document. In this method, new electronic documents, which are completely separated from electronic source documents as materials, are edited to compose a generated electronic document. When the electronic source documents are changed, the changed electronic source documents are temporarily deleted from the generated electronic document, and then the changed electronic source documents are input again.
At this time, when a plurality of generated electronic documents, for example, generated electronic documents for sales, planning and development are created from one and the same electronic source document, relation of the electronic source document with the generated electronic documents cannot be managed, and therefore if the electronic source document is changed, all the generated electronic documents having the electronic source document as a component must be modified one by one, which leads to much expense in time and effort. There is also a disadvantage that oversights are likely to be caused and failures in modification frequently occur.
Furthermore, annotation information to be attached to the conventional electronic binder can be attached to each of the electronic document in the material (electronic source document) constituting the electronic binder and the generated electronic document generated by binding the electronic source document, but the annotation information has no relation with each other. Therefore, in the case where the generated electronic document is composed of the electronic source document to which annotation information has already been attached, and annotation information is further added to this generated electronic document, for example, the each annotation information should be managed separately, even though the file format of the annotation information attached to the electronic source document for composition and the format of the annotation information that is further attached to the generated electronic document are identical to each other.
Also, if the generated electronic document is composed using as an image the electronic source document with annotation information attached thereto, the annotation information will have relation only with the image. Therefore, when the generated electronic document is composed with an image newly created by changing the electronic source document, for example, the annotation information attached to the pre-change electronic source document before it is changed cannot be incorporated in the post-change electronic source document.